#(arc: essence rifts)

[genesysofthestars]

Day 27

Erick was not in his room again.

Zen sighed before began searching around their headquarters. After a few rounds by the corridors, they were about to call for some help when they found him by the courtyard, in the middle of the soft rain.

He was standing there alone, just letting himself be soaked by the rainfall. His eyes were closed and his head raised up to the skies as if praying to the hidden stars tonight. Yet his face was not unbothered by the raindrops nor its coldness. If anything, he looked... peaceful.

After long weeks of recovery, this was the first time Zen saw him so... calm. As much as they wanted him to cherished the night's silence; however, it was past midnight. And it was no good to stay under the rain for so long. They were about to step out to the courtyard when they realized... it wasn't exactly rain that was falling tonight.

No rain would be emitting white noise like that.

Every drop cracked and flickered in the air, almost as if it was glitching the atmosphere itself. White noise lingered around them and Zen knew what exactly it was.

It wasn't ordinary rain. It was a static storm.

Yet they only stood there and watched it fall.

They should be worried. Perhaps they should be even panicking by now; should be sending an alert of this disaster.

But they didn't. They didn't because something about this storm was different.

Instead of the perilous storm that everyone knew, it was a soft snowfall. The slow descent of static pieces were almost like snowflakes that sparked in the air. The white noise continued to resonate around them yet it lacked erraticness nor sharpness to it. Because of this, Zen dared reach out his hand and caught a drop.

It tingled on their skin before it disappeared from their palm like a melted snowflake... but it did not hurt. It did not blighted them with any corruption as they expected it to be.

Their eyes looked away from the skies and to Erick. His eyes were now opened, its silverness shining in the dark. It had never return to their original blue but what did returned was its shine. Once an empty gaze now stared the skies with content with a small smile on his face.

And with that, Zen decided to leave him be just for tonight.

[greeniegaes]

Back at it agains with another svsss au im pulling out of my (slightly) sleep deprived brain

Basically yada yada everything happens as normal UP UNTIL the immortal alliance arc. SQQ gets this searing headache and the system just keeps popping up with errors, so while they are all fighting the spider hoard the system just kinda snaps and breaks. SQQ suddenly feels like he’s hit by a truck, his body starting to act like his sickly Shen Yuan body and his cultivation is tying itself into dead knots and every bone in his body feels like it’s locking up. There’s no system to blame for things as he and LBH confront MBJ and he just has to do his hardest to survive with just his spiritual sword.

And then the worse thing happens, Xiu Ya shatters.

SQQ panics at this, continuing to try his best fighting people off and eventually MBJ leaves *hooray* except not really because all the system errors are getting louder and louder in his head, and everything is blue and blaring and he might be bleeding and he can’t understand what LBH is saying even though he is right there, shaking his body and crying.

And then the abyss opens. He suddenly has the choice. He can send LBH, his white little sheep, down there to continue on with the PIDW plot, or he can… not do that.

So he pushes LBH.

Away from him. Away from the abyssal rift, only for him to be the one that falls though. He had prepared various lesson plans, life advice, what skills people to work on and so much more once he got without-a-cure, just incase he slipped up one day and couldn’t protect himself. So SQQ was satisfied as he knew his peak would be taken care of if LBH opened a specific drawer, everyone could still be taught by the hall masters and also have some future help prepared for each of them.

So SQQ let’s himself fall into the abyss, watching his student’s horrified expression as he plummets. He hears the system disconnect from LBH as he falls, all of the glowing blue error messages and pop ups instantly go away and he’s left in the dark as he sinks further and further into the abyss.

Surprisingly, he wakes up. He landed in the same field of flowers that are the reason LBH didn’t die in the original, they are filled with celestial qi in a place meant to be horrible and deadly. The one good thing about this place. He lays there for awhile and lets the plants essence fix up his meridians.

Then he has to experience the same horrifying things the protagonist did in person, fighting off each beast and trying his damn hardest to survive. It takes him a while, fighting and walking his way through what’s practically hell on earth, slaying beasts ten times his size, making sure not to fall into the trappings of demonic plants. He cuts his long hair, he thinks he will never see his peak again, so what do filial ties matter when you’re barely surviving. Sometimes the worse thing is his own mind, he feels a heavy layer of guilt to himself for so willing going along with the system. He sometimes forgets it’s not his fault too, that he was threatened to return to a dead body if he didn’t do as he was supposed to. But he’s happy sometimes too, he goes back to that field of flowers, laying in them and basking in his memories of a happier LBH, a LQG that isn’t dead, a Qing Jing peak full of song and happy healthy students.

He ascends from the abyss that day. He doesn’t know how or why but he wakes up in the same field of flowers, the sky above him no longer a damning black with red cracks seeping light in. it’s blue, soft, it hurts his eyes almost to look at it. It hurts so much but he can’t look away. He picks himself up, looking at all the grime and blood on himself and weeps in relief that he can go home. He hides his face and asks people where he is, somewhere in HHP territories, and begins to make his way back to his sect. Once he gets to his peak he sits down softly at the gate, it’s night time and there haven’t been many people about. He basks in the feeling of being home, leaning his head against the tall bamboo pole as he falls asleep.

He’s glad tomorrow is a new day, when he can see his family and just go back to his life.

(in the years he’s been gone all of CQS has been in some kind of mourning. LBH found all the letters from his shizun and they made all the disciples of QJP weep. Some of them took the advice given and left, some of them stayed and took care of a lordless peak. None of the hall masters or disciples were qualified to step up, and when the issue was raised even the peak lords agreed he shouldn’t be replaced. It was LQG who found him at the gate, going to visit the sword shrine in the bamboo house after an expedition, going to leave another fan to rot at the shrine’s foot. instead he heaved up his shixiong, hair not even reaching his shoulders, hands callused and dirty, and brought him back to the bamboo house, waking LBH in the process. Once morning light came everyone would know that their lost peak lord came home, but first they had to get the doctor to make sure he actually got through the night)

[medea10]

My Review of In/Spectre: Season 2

First season review here.

Color me surprised when it was announced that this series was getting a second season. I didn’t hate it or anything, I was just okay with the story. I didn’t think the Steel Lady Nanase story was going to last as long as it did and thought Kotoko was going to solve more mysteries than that. That reason alone was one of the reasons I was just blah with the anime. Plus, I was pretty in to Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun more than this and both aired around the same time. Well, at least Hanako-kun is getting some kind of new project. What it is, I’m skeptical as fuck about. In the meantime, let’s check out more mysteries with Kotoko and Kuro.

HISTORY: Kotoko Iwanaga is used to the abnormal and out of place situations. When she was 11 years old, she went missing for two weeks. During that time, demons asked her to become their “Goddess of Wisdom”. However, Iwanaga lost her right eye and left leg as a result of this power. Seven years later, she meets a college-aged male named Kuro Sakuragawa. She found a fascination with him, but kept her distance due to him being engaged to another woman.

But Kuro’s life changed when he and his then girlfriend were on vacation and saw a kappa and the situation turned near-deadly. Due to an abnormality with Kuro, whenever it looks like he’s on the verge of death, he comes back to life. This caused the inevitable rift between Kuro and his girlfriend and leaving an opportunity for Kotoko to jump in and force herself on him. Ever since, Kotoko has become Kuro’s really clingy girlfriend. Kuro is just so disinterested and indifferent when it comes to her romantic shenanigans. But he doesn’t mind being an aide when dealing with the supernatural.

SEASON TWO: The first episode starts off with some exposition from a couple of no-name apparitions where they talk about Kotoko and Kuro. Basically, stuff we saw last season including how Kotoko became the God of Wisdom and some stuff from the Steel Lady Nanase arc. Come episode 2, we’re introduced to our next big case involving a man who befriended a Yuki Onna and is accused of killing his ex-wife.

Thankfully, this season we get more than just one long case that extends to pretty much the entire 12 episodes. The Yuki Onna murder case was settled faster than anticipated with only 3 episodes dedicated to it and we get another mystery involving a creepy puppet and dead sea life. And of course, we get more from the mysterious cousin Rikka. Unfortunately, it’s only one episode where she’s actually seen. But her essence lingers! And if you could believe it, there were three more mysteries shown in this season. Now, that’s what I’m talking about! If you’re going to be a supernatural anime, do more than just Steel Lady Nanase for an entire season.

LICENSING: Just like the previous season, Crunchyroll streamed this series with several dubs available. No doubt about that as this series was known as a “Crunchyroll Original” back when they were doing that. Wait, are they still doing that? Nah, I don’t think they are. That’s all there is to it. The original cast came back and, yeah, it’s all good.

SHIPPING PART TWO: Yeah, Kotoko and Kuro are still together…I guess. Kotoko is still clingy and saying perverted things. Kuro is still dead inside despite being immortal. I mean, yeah, they still have cute moments here and there throughout the season. But, come on! You’ve seen these two together. Despite my thoughts about this ship, I don’t hate Kotoko. Yeah, I don’t hate her. I just hate this ship. They work well together when dealing with the supernatural. It’s just that I think they should just remain professionals at their craft and nothing more.

And no amount of sensual ending themes sung by Mamoru Miyano is ever going to convince me otherwise here.

Even when he's pictured with her, Kuro just has this, "Please, just end my life" look on his face.

Now, were there any interferences from anybody this season? Surprisingly no! Yeah, Rikka only had one episode where she was the main focus. Although, her presence has lingered around several of the cases Kotoko worked on. And Rikka still thinks that Kotoko is wrong for her cousin. She’s not quiet about her thoughts on the matter either. As for Saki, Kuro’s ex-fiancé, no sign of her this season.

After badmouthing Kotoko x Kuro, I should have no say in this matter. But I support these two here. Don’t at me!

RANDOM NOTE: Ladies and gentlemen, we have found the one person who survived a hit from Truck-kun. I know several characters on here are spirits and immortals, Rikka and Kuro especially. It’s just that when you literally watch a character get hit by a truck, you automatically think they’re dead or dead and in another world. Rikka gets hit and gets up like nothing happened.

ENDING: Throughout this season, Kotoko and Kuro have been aiding several people with anomalies surrounding the supernatural. This last arc had Kotoko help a dying man resolve his guilty conscience with his family. This mystery had us running around seeing who really killed this man’s wife. Apparently, this woman who was killed 23 years ago, her entire family wanted her dead including her husband and adult children. Sounds like an anime version of the Trumps to me! At least this woman wasn’t buried on a golf course.

Medea, can you go one review without making a snarky Trump-related comment?

When he stops existing, I’ll stop.

The family was running a hotel business and the mother wanted to run the business and the family her own way. So, her husband’s ideas were put on the back-burner, the eldest son can’t leave to become a chef, the daughter can’t marry who she wants, and the youngest son can’t run anything. Unless this woman dies!

Now, where does the supernatural part come into play here? The husband apparently made an agreement with an entity back when he wanted his wife gone. The man was promised it will be so. In actuality, someone actually killed the woman before the entity could do anything. Kotoko heard from the entity, the patriarch of the family, his son, son-in-law, and second-hand talk from the granddaughter. Kotoko laid down what really transpired the night of the murder. Things did not go well for the family with hearing the actual truth about the daughter killing her mother. Things got so heated from the conversation that the son-in-law pulled out a gun, threatened Kotoko with it and wound-up shooting Kuro in the process.

Oh-ho-ho, what did you think was going to happen here?

Kuro’s just going to come back to life. Kuro and Rikka are immortal due to a meddling grandparent and a mysterious item they ate as kids. And of course, Kotoko can communicate with spirits and demons. But this family doesn’t need to know that. In the aftermath of this family learning the full truth, things took a downturn as the father’s illness got worse and the daughter tried committing suicide as the family knows she murdered her mother. Kotoko and Kuro visited the patriarch to the family again after what has happened and learned that they were recommended to help him by none other than Rikka.

Kuro’s seldom-seen cousin Rikka has been in-and-out of this series. She has made her feelings known to Kuro and Kotoko as she loves her cousin Kuro and hates Kotoko. Rikka stayed with the couple during a time in the first season, but took her leave and hasn’t been seen by the two since then. What are Rikka’s intentions with recommending two people to get help from Kotoko? We do not see this in the final episode.

Instead, we see Kotoko conveniently at an unagi restaurant where there’s an intense conversation between two friends. One of the friends accuses the other of killing his spouse. Now, you would think that Kotoko would have heard these two guys speaking aloud in a public setting. But this is Kotoko Iwanaga, the “Goddess of Wisdom” to many spirits, entities, and whatnots. Kotoko was at the restaurant for ulterior motives to do something so crass with Kuro later. She didn’t expect to hear from a ghost. It’s the ghost of the woman that guy from the table over killed. She’s latching onto her living husband making things heavier and difficult for the man. Kotoko later confronts the man and explains that his late wife’s ghost is causing this pain. Kotoko pretty much destroys this whole man’s career in mere minutes. We end with Kotoko going home with Kuro and…the end, I guess.

Hmm…I’m only now realizing that three of the mysteries this season revolved around a dead wife of some sort. Dead ex-wife, dead wife, some guy that killed his wife…and Rikka might be the reason why Kotoko ends up helping out in all of these mysteries. Is Rikka sending Kotoko some hints that if she marries Kuro, she’ll wind up dead. I’m reading too much into this.

I can’t say I didn’t get what I wanted out of this season and that was to have more stories that focus on more than just one entity or mystery. I got that. But I can’t help but feel an empty feeling when it comes to that certain woman, Rikka. We see her in one episode and she’s only mentioned a few times. Yet, there’s so much tenseness between her and the duo. I guess we need yet another season to see if we get more interactions or some kind of showdown. It looks as though the manga is still in publication so I’m going to assume we’ll get more In/Spectre in the coming years.

Okay, fine. I liked this season better than the first season. And judging by the scores on MAL, I’m not alone in that sentiment. And okay, I’ll get off my high-horse about Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun and give In/Spectre its due. If you’re interested in the supernatural, give both seasons a shot. Can’t have one without the other.

Crunchyroll has both seasons available for streaming.

[pixelpolicebox]

The Mega Genesis Chronicles Introduction/Prologue

Hello Everyone! I'm going to talk about my WIP series called "The Mega Genesis Chronicles"

This series is formatted similarly to SMG4, with episodes focused on comedies yet having arcs with serious tones in them from time to time. This series takes place in an alternate Sonic universe, with Sonic being replaced by "Christopher Cycon"

The planet they live on is called Suibom (Mobius backwards) and the planet is divided into three distinct sections: -Grassy Hills (Based on "Sonic's world") -Nevadian (Based kinda on the world of "Madness Combat") -Overworld (Based on "Minecraft's Overworld") The main villain of the series is an alternate Eggman/Robotnik called "Dr. Eggnog" (based on a joke from an old plush series I did in the past):

The story before the series actually will begin: Christopher Cycon was fighting Eggnog and Christopher was cornered at an edge and a flash of red flashed behind Christopher, it distracted Eggnog enough for Christopher to destroy his mech. Eggnog swiftly escaped. Christopher then went down to check what that flash was and found a rift that was on the verge of closing, while they are looking around they find a humanoid with red hair out cold nearby the rift and bring them to his home nearby after the portal collapses. Christopher contacts his longtime friend "Peter Daniel" (Who is a villager and a scientific engineer) and they get a new house built over the chasm (which was filled in) to make sure they can protect it, who knows if it will open again and what power lies within it. After the house was built, the redhead wakes up, they have complete amnesia and don't remember anything of where they were before the rift or who they are or even their own gender, all they have is the first letter of their first name, and their last name. N. Karbara. Peter and Chirstopher suggest the name Nat for them, and the red head takes the name.

After settling, Peter gets Nat to go to a college to learn about the new world they reside in, that's when they meet "Ophelia Martin" who works at a Nuclear facility, not too long after they meet Nat, they end up in a meltdown situation and become mutated giving them the appearance they have in the series.

Afterwards they would meet Jay, a mechanic who Christopher and Peter met in Middle School, Jay is a good friend of the other two and decides to join them and help work on vehicles and such. (He does not have a ref sheet yet) During the first ever mission where all of them are together they go to an abandoned facility and learn about the creation of creatures known as "Dream Catchers", overpowered artificial creatures, who connect to a specific person to gain energy. The most powerful one 01/The Essence has broken out taking 02/The Kuriou with them. The team comes across The Essence trying to kill The Kuriou, in which the team stops The Essence and traps him in a pocket dimension, with an ability they all gain during this fight known as "MEMORI"

MEMORI - You can summon anything that you have seen in your life (that isn't living or food), as long as you can remember it, but only for a max time of 5 minutes. People who have this ability will be seen having a glowing light blue ring around their dominant hand's wrist.

After The Kuriou connects with Nat Karbara.

The actual series takes place 2 years after these events. EXTRA INFO: There is an organization called "The C of The Arctic" which is owned by a man named "Arctic Bohemian" He might look like a rich douche evil wolf, but in reality he is a kind and caring person.

The C of The Arctic focuses on anomaly and alternate dimension research. They try to dissociate themselves from the SCP foundation since they do not trap the anomalies unless absaloutley necessary. The dimensions they research are as follows: "The Backrooms (and it's other versions) (This is what they primarily research out of any of these dimensions), The Nether, The End, and the mysterious middle afterlife known as The Nine. I have still yet to finish all the reference sheets needed to even consider looking for people to commission to make the 3d models of these characters so the series is probably a year or two away. I do hope to make a video about the characters in detail and release it on the series that predates this one's (The Genesis Of Reality (This is a whole other can of worms and isn't needed to understand this series) anniversary: January 3rd 2023. When this series comes out, I do hope you guys enjoy it .w.

[anddreadful]

claire's D&D campaigns

If i'm gonna be more active on tumblr for anything, it should be to talk about my D&D characters/ campaigns (the main thing I use twitter for anyway). So! An intro post! ft. my art

A World Torn

[Homebrew] WT is 2+ years deep and immensely complicated at this point, but the main conceit of the worldbuilding is that the material plane is unstable, and dangerous rifts to other planes will often open. Our main quest has been to collect essences from different planes (by defeating bosses on/ from them) in order to free a trapped god who will allegedly fix things.

My PC: Tailor, a cranky and deeply traumatized mid-30s weirdo hermit-slash-tinkerker (-slash onetime actual tailor). Fighter (gunslinger)/ rogue multiclass

Their backstory: 15ish years ago, Tailor (real name Silas, he goes by Tailor for reasons) co-founded what became a terrorist faction with his then-boyfriend and certified Hot Evil Wizard, Chess. Tailor invented guns for their group to use against enemy mages, but eventually dumped Chess for being evil, left the group and the city, and attempted redemption via essentially a whole second unrelated backstory which also ended terribly. Then he had a ten year depressive episode in a house in the woods somewhere and has only recently emerged to try to set his various fuckups right.

In the campaign: His new party members/ friends have been extremely good for him; he has a surrogate parental relationship with the young bard and our cleric has bullied him into some degree of emotional self-awareness. The party returned to the city and dunked on Chess to a sufficient degree that he's now our pet domesticated former villain and he and Tailor are tentatively back together. He's also reunited with a beloved friend from the second part of his backstory and is grappling with the effects their journey had on her. Our next quest arc is a fae masquerade ball ft. an assassination attempt against a pretender queen. Oh, also, he's got a ton of corruption magic going on that link him to a demon we need to kill. Sexy stuff!

Curse of Strahd

[Module] [BROAD COS SPOILERS] The base COS plot is that the party gets sucked from the standard high fantasy adventureland into Barovia, a claustrophobic demiplane of gothic horror bullshit ruled by store-brand Dracula Strahd von Zarovich. If you want to get out-- or just make living in Barovia a less miserable existence-- you have to kill him. We're nearly 2 years in (approaching the final phase of the adventure) on this one too!

My PC: Theodora/ Teddy, a lonely orphaned artificer and runaway ex-soldier in her early 20s

Their backstory: One of Teddy's inventions went south on the battlefield and literally blew up in her face, leaving her with gnarly black scarring (since healed) and an all-black eyeball. It also killed a bunch of people. So she ran away and had been taking refuge in a temple for a few months when a paladin and a druid walked in and started talking about forming a search party to look for missing kids in the woods...

We learned as the campaign progressed that Teddy is actually from Barovia originally, and was smuggled out as a baby because of a prophesy that Strahd would become obsessed with her. This has turned out to be because she's the latest reincarnation of a woman who dumped him a thousand years ago, hello vampire reincarnation romance bullshit

(she is also romancing Borakov, the party paladin)

In the campaign: the Teddy/ Strahd romance arc, due to obvious "we are actively plotting to kill him" reasons, came down to an ultimatum marriage proposal. Teddy sincerely accepted (and got laid, good for her), but just before the wedding, the party got the pieces of Strahd backstory they'd been missing, revealing that Strahd had lied about his relationship with Teddy's predecessor and her death. So Teddy left Strahd at the altar, hooked up with Borakov, and is now determined to either kill Strahd or disrupt the curse that keeps reincarnating her back into his grasp. Strahd, after failing to get her back, pivoted into "I'M TOTALLY OVER HER ANYWAY" and is trying to kill us all now. rip. it was fun while it lasted.

Overall, Teddy is Doing Bad. The curse means she's likely to die soon anyway, her relationship with a Dark PowerTM might be turning her into a monster, Borakov is doomed and also turning into an angel?, everyone in Barovia hates her, and her vampire boyfriend turned out to be trash. Barovia might be saved, but Teddy probably won't be.

Unearthed Remnants

[Homebrew] UR is new, but it's the first campaign in an original setting my fiance has been working on for ages called Vasara. ~1,600 years ago, in the midst of a massive war, the land cracked into pieces in a cataclysmic event called the Rend that banished magic from the world and left deep rifts in the continent that monsters tend to crawl out of. Civilization has built itself back up using technology rather than relying on magic, and though magic has slowly begun returning in the last few hundred years, it's considered dangerous and, at least in the main human kingdom, is highly regulated.

My PC: Aster, an outspoken tiefling grad student-turned-warlock. She has my best attempt at a slavic accent.

Their backstory: Aster is a nepo baby working in the historical archives in the capitol city of her kingdom. Her grandpa is on the board or something, and her parents are some of the kingdom's foremost archeologists excavating pre-Rend ruins. Aster carries on the family passion for history and is an insufferable, arrogant nerd about it. Recently she found a very strange book recovered from a ruin, and it talked to her, and maybe she wrote her name in it and did a magic ritual that required her to bleed out all over a ritual circle, and Oops! All Warlock (pact of the tome, natch)

In the campaign: At the book's behest, she traveled (*was yeeted) to a nearby farming town where she met a secretive human paladin named Clay and a friendly amnesiac pre-rend relic warforged named Sev. Investigating a strange explosion nearby, they stumbled onto an untouched pre-rend ruin with some truly wild magical shit going on that will definitely have consequences, but for now, they're headed back to the city. Clay and Aster both adore Sev but are at odds with each other-- he's basically a fantasy cop (unbeknownst to Aster, he's actually being trained by a secret mage-hunting paladin order), and she's got brand-new, super illegal, likely volatile magic she's figuring out on the fly that he clearly does not approve of. Aster's bringing "try to arrest me, I fucking dare you" energy.

[chimerazone]

What is The Zone?

The Zone is the name for a universe that goes by the same largely unspoken name. Essentially, It is a pantheists interpretation of our universe, with a sci-fi twist. The Zone is it's own narrator, and all events within are the expressions of itself. In essence, the Zone's story is told through the lifeforms within it, weather that be human or otherwise. The zone is the overarching character that binds all others, most notably Vita Cygnus.

(Images of Vita Cygnus from arcs 2025, 2034 and 2043 from left to right.)

Vita has three arcs, each of which represent a portion of her gender transition from young man to woman. From pretransition, she was a member of the UN military in arc 2025. She began her transition as a woman in the 2034 arc, becoming a scientist who studied biology, Quantum mechanics and particle physics. in the 2043 arc, Dr. Cygnus has completed her personal social and physical transition, and due to story vents, also becomes an entity known as an "OmniHuman". The Zone is a Sci-Fi universe, and so anything "Magical" is explained in a scientific way. For example: much of the things that actual scientists IRL do not have scientific answers for, the Zone explains with quasiparticles or higher dimensional entities (HDE's). Otherwise all things can be explained, including ghosts or any other phenomena. The four notable arcs include year -156m(told mainly through flashbacks), year 2025, year 2034, and year 2043. -156m is a retelling of the Jurassic period, but with the Silurian hypothesis and time travel. 2025 is where Vita's story begins, and spans the duration of the Consumption War. The consumption War is a sci-fi continuation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, as it was in IRL early 2024, but with added technological advancements. Year 2034 is the arc where the Rift Crisis occurs, and a wormhole is opened leading to the Jurassic period. there are split stories in this arc that occur in -156m and in it's own year. The stories from 2034 are mainly set in the futuristic city of Rhimedale and the harbor town of Noxburg. The final arc in 2043 is representative of The Great Displacement. The solar system is displaced forewords through time and space, landing in the Milkdromeda Galaxy. the story at this point revolves around the People of earth and the silicon based Bijou of the volcanic planet, Enfer. The Zone's story is told through multiple subjects. the overarching narrative may revolve around Vita, however there are a few other characters in the spotlight, such as the priestess Resurga, the warlord Dispareo, and the investigator William Grey. Perspectives are not limited to these characters, however the narrative can only revolve around one individual per storyline. This is just a general outline of the Zone, and there is more information regarding it. In the spirit of briefness, I will leave any other future explanations for a later date. leave a comment with any questions, interest, concerns etc. Finally, don't forget to have a lovely day ahead, because that's what really matters.

[xasha777]

In a universe where the fabric of reality is woven with threads of vibrant energy, there exists a realm known as the Prismatia. This realm, unlike any other, is a kaleidoscope of colors, its skies painted with hues that shift and dance, creating rainbows that arc across the heavens. The landscape is a tapestry of radiant flora, each petal and leaf shimmering with an inner light, reflecting the brilliance of the stars above.

In the heart of Prismatia, there lived a being of unparalleled beauty and power. Her name was Lumina, a guardian of the cosmic order and a weaver of worlds. Lumina's long, flowing hair mirrored the colors of the realm, adorned with flowers that bloomed from the very essence of creation. Her eyes held the secrets of the universe, deep and infinite, as if they contained the entire cosmos within their gaze.

Lumina was the custodian of the ancient knowledge of Cosmogony, the study of the origins of the universe. This knowledge was passed down through generations of guardians, each adding their understanding and discoveries to the great tapestry of existence. Lumina's role was to ensure the balance of creation, guiding the forces that shaped the realms and maintaining harmony among the stars.

One day, as Lumina wandered through the vibrant fields of Prismatia, she sensed a disturbance in the cosmic order. The skies above, usually serene and harmonious, were now turbulent, with swirls of energy clashing and creating rifts in the fabric of reality. Lumina's heart raced as she realized that something was threatening the very essence of the universe.

Following the disturbance, Lumina reached the edge of Prismatia, where the realms of existence met. There, she found a tear in the cosmic fabric, a portal to a chaotic void beyond. From this void emerged a being of shadow and entropy, a creature born from the remnants of a long-forgotten universe. It was a Devourer, an entity that consumed worlds and thrived on disorder.

Lumina knew she had to act quickly to protect her realm and the universe at large. Summoning her inner strength, she called upon the ancient knowledge of Cosmogony. With a wave of her hand, she began to weave the energies of creation, drawing upon the power of the stars and the essence of life itself. Her hair, a cascade of colors, shimmered with intensity as she focused her will.

The battle between Lumina and the Devourer was a clash of cosmic forces. The skies of Prismatia erupted with light and shadow, rainbows clashing with darkness. Lumina's flowers, infused with the energy of creation, bloomed and withered in an instant, each cycle adding to her power. The Devourer, fueled by chaos, lashed out with tendrils of void, seeking to unravel the fabric of reality.

With each strike, Lumina wove patterns of light, countering the Devourer's assaults and slowly pushing it back. She channeled the knowledge of Cosmogony, drawing upon the fundamental forces that birthed the universe. As the battle raged, Lumina's understanding deepened, and she realized that the key to victory lay in creation itself.

Summoning all her strength, Lumina created a new star within the void, a beacon of light and life. The star's radiance pierced the darkness, overwhelming the Devourer and sealing the rift. With a final, triumphant burst of energy, Lumina banished the creature back to the void, restoring balance to the universe.

Exhausted but victorious, Lumina returned to the heart of Prismatia. The realm, though scarred by the battle, began to heal, its vibrant colors returning with renewed brilliance. Lumina knew that her role as guardian was far from over, but she was determined to continue her duty, protecting the cosmic order and ensuring the harmony of creation.

And so, Lumina's legend grew, her tale a testament to the power of creation and the enduring strength of those who safeguard the universe. In the ever-shifting skies of Prismatia, her story was written in the stars, a beacon of hope and resilience for all who gazed upon the vibrant realm.

[vinceviralfreak]

HEAVEN IS HELL: Once upon a timeless rift, where realms intertwined,

A celestial battle of cosmic design.

In a realm beyond time, so divine and grand,

Heaven and Hell embarked on a war they had planned.

The heavenly hosts, with their seraphic grace,

Marched forth with valor, towards Hell's fiery embrace.

Their golden armor shimmered, their halos ablaze,

As they sought to overcome Hell's malevolent haze.

But in Hell's dark abyss, where torment did dwell,

Demons gathered, ready to unleash their fiery spell.

Perdition's tempest raged, chaos reigned supreme,

As Hell's legions prepared to crush Heaven's gleam.

The angels, with eyes glowing like stars in the night,

Took flight on wings of light, preparing to fight.

Swords clashed with pitchforks, shields met flaming spears,

In this battle of good and evil, riddled with fears.

Yet, as the battle persisted, something seemed amiss,

For Heaven's halls echoed with a disheartening hiss.

Angelic souls, once pure and divine,

Were now marred by darkness, their ethereal essence in decline.

Unbeknownst to them, the very air they breathed,

Carried whispers of malice, a wickedness conceived.

For while Heaven fought Hell, they failed to see,

The treachery that lurked within their own verdant sea.

The demons, aided by their shrewd, cunning ways,

Infused angelic hearts with shadows, their souls ablaze.

Corruption spread like wildfire through Heaven's domain,

Turning purity into wickedness, innocence stained.

As Hell's fires spread, engulfing the divine,

In Hell's own abyss, a light began to shine.

A demon stood strong, his heart filled with light,

A warrior struggling to distinguish wrong from right.

He saw the twisted irony, the paradox so true,

Heaven's blindness to the darkness that grew.

For it was in this dark abyss, where demons reside,

That a flicker of hope, deep within him, ignited.

He spoke of a truce, a somber revelation,

That Hell's deepest pit was a reflection of Heaven's damnation.

For in their blind pursuit of celestial fight,

Heaven had lost itself, consumed by its own light.

Both realms stood still, in a moment of realization,

That Heaven is Hell, Hell is Heaven, a profound revelation.

For true good and evil cannot exist alone,

They are intertwined, their essences forever prone.

And so, the war ceased, a truce was declared,

The heavenly hosts left Hell, no longer ensnared.

For the demons had shown them a mirror, so stark,

That darkness and light create a celestial arc.

In this tale of battles fought, of realms torn asunder,

The heavens and hells merged, no longer left asunder.

For the true essence of divinity, beyond realms and lore,

Lies in the balance of darkness and light, forevermore.

[painless-innit-colourful]

“Phil- I don’t- I’m starting to feel like I’m at my peak, Phil. I feel like- I feel like I can’t get any better than this. I feel like this is- this is my- this is my top point, and I- I don’t know man, I don’t know if I can actually, if I- I’m trying so hard, and nothing seems to be getting better, and I think there might just be something wrong with me, and I- I don’t know how I can get people to forgive me, I don’t know- ‘Cause they say they do; I just don’t believe that they do [...] I feel like no one’s just- forgiven me, everyone- everyone just says that because they’re scared of me and then it feels like I’m trying to push back and that’s how Ranboo got... Ranboo- I’m sure he’s still okay, I’m sure”

c!Wilbur’s been through hell, literally and figuratively. After all the anguish and guilt and turmoil he suffered in Pogtopia, he found only an empty train station and 13 years of mostly isolation waiting. And I think the essence of c!Wilbur from his resurrection through the Burger Van arc and Hitting on 16 was that he believed he deserved better as a result of his time in limbo. Dubious nature of canon time aside, he probably spent longer trapped on Waterloo Underground platform than c!Dream spent in Pandora’s Vault. All the shouting at the walls with no one coming left him, at least for a time, in a much worse position than he was in before, but I’d suggest that his hope after his talk with Tommy and Tubbo on Disc Day was that he’d be getting out and that the real world would be kinder. In essence, he believes he’s done his time, and as a result is entitled to a better life. Not to anything specifically, but perhaps some better luck this time. Less loss, more help.

But to be helped, you have to admit what’s wrong, and then accept that help. To be trusted, you must earn that trust, and also probably their forgiveness. c!Wilbur’s unhealthy pattern of behaviour where he didn’t understand this and thought he could just rejoin society like he didn’t blow up a whole nation is what causes the rift between him and c!Tubbo (or rather makes the rift bigger) after the anniversary, and what sets him on the path to accidentally taking one of Ranboo’s canon lives. But obviously, since Hitting on 16, he’s realised that his previous track was just sending him further off the rails. He wants to fix things but doesn’t know how. And maybe he’s also afraid of trying now, in case he ends up in another situation somehow hurting the people he loves. He’s peaked, he suggests, with notable fear in his voice. He’s trying so hard, but what if this is it for him? What if trying again just shows everyone again and again that everything he’s touched eventually goes up in smoke?

And that’s why, even now, he puts off apologising to c!Tommy. Because if there’s anyone he can’t risk hurt again, it’s Tommy.

[genesysofthestars]

Erina uses the symbols she once stole to fight back.

"My dear symbols, I believe we already had met."

"Please... Lend me your power once again"

The symbols let her use their power, considering her as the last master that held it.

[trobbio-silksong]

Reasons not to kill your brother, no matter how annoying he may be: 1.

AO3 Ver.

The realm screamed, ground shaking and crumbling under the weight of its pain, and under the battle in its skies. A blade of light cleaved through the wing of Her enemy, a single flash of pain among the many as one vassal struck the other, the Sister scorched Her Brother. Why did They fight?

He was not idle as She attacked, though He screamed as another blade tore though His side. Did They not know, that every strike against the other, was struck against it too? He lobbed balls of fire, many splashing harmlessly against their light formed counterparts. That every blow those Children took, it would also hurt anew? Though many others would hit their mark, and She snarled as the flames burned through Her fur. Its minders and menders, the keepers it had spawned. They fought viciously, brilliant pillars of light and spires of fear made manifest ripping arcs of godly blood from the two combatants. The blood of its Children long since filled a pond. 

They danced across the realm’s cracking skies, paying no mind to anything more to snuffing out the life of their counterpart. As One broke the Other, the clouds darkened with tears. Soon, the battle began to draw to a close. The realm’s desperate cries fell on deafened ears. It was easy to see that He was far worse off than She, His gaping wounds and ragged wings to Her charred fur and blackened skin. Her blinding light had always outshined his brightest flames. Desperation now filled His every move and certainty now fueled Hers, crimson fire growing wavering and weak in the face of the spears of light that now hemmed it in. And horribly. And finally. No.

She won. 

NO!

A terrible, final blow. No no no no NO! A single blade straight through the chest and He died, -- Please! -- eyes dimming and wings faltering as He stared at the light piercing through his heart. Please, no! He started to fall, and soon his corpse plummeted through the fracturing skies, -- PLEASE! -- the disintegrating clouds, -- PLEASE!!! -- and out of the realm itself. …Please. The deed was done, and he was gone. And He took a part of it with Him. 

All was still, and all was silent. Nothing moved, not even the twinkling motes of essence. The Dream stared at the enormous rift the dead nightmare’s departure left, emptiness reaching forwards to fill the tear his corpse had wrought.

The realm howled. It shook, the sky and ground crumbling alike in the wake of its sorrow and the wake of its pain. The Son had died. The hole in it grew wider, darkness stretching questing fingers as it crumbled in on itself. Light drained, shadows growing deeper, and deeper as the realm fell. It was dying. Its Son was gone, and He had took the heart of it with Him.

[pockethexapod]

Once, We Were Kings...

Aspects Arena is the working title of a competitive browser-based monster battler/rpg developed by project head and good friend Solariser (socials pending) with assets by myself. Players assume the role of commander, pitting their personal team of elemental mercenaries against vicious marauders, dangerous creatures and, of course, other mercenaries. Inspired by the 'mons of the 90s and tempered with tabletop sensibilities, we're shooting for a novice-friendly environment with plenty of tactical depth for those who seek it out... The kind of thing you can engage with casually through fanworks, and/or argue about in a build advice thread on reddit until you're blue in the face.

I'll be posting additional art, sprites, lore and links to the project once I'm back home in a few days, but for now, below is a first-person accounting of the setting's origins. As the project is barely in alpha, testing is still strictly in-house, but for those who are interested I will be providing links to open testing when the time comes, so stay tuned to this tumblr as well as my twitter (@pockethexapod), and if you're particularly intrigued, you can join our Discord. Thanks for your time!

- PH

Ps. We also have a subreddit (r/Aspects), but it's been rather neglected. We're working on fixing that.

“Before we were aspects, we were kings. Eternal prisoners of paradise, we lived in blissful ignorance of the world beyond our own. But one day, we were set free...

A tremendous rift opened in the walls of our Domain, hurling thousands of us into the void. We fell, fearful and grasping, unfamiliar with adversity, coddled by omnipotence. That was when it faded into view… Iunctus, the world between. Flat, brittle and pale, it seemed to be our only foothold in that featureless abyss, suspended in the darkness by forces imperceptible. As we wandered the surface, we grew anxious, desperate to make sense of what had transpired. 

"Why are we here?"

"How do we get back?"

"Are we trapped here forever?"

Suddenly, there was movement on the horizon. Myriad beings, fantastically, dreadfully alien, converged on us from the emptiness in droves. Nearly too strange to fully comprehend, many seemed reluctant to approach each other, disoriented, as if they'd recently suffered a fate similar to our own. While communication was attempted by some, tension choked the atmosphere, nerves wound taught by uncertainty… Until someone finally snapped.

To this day, no one knows who struck the first blow, nor how or why. Spurred by fear and fueled by primordial magic, the violence of the First War quickly cascaded until only those on the outskirts could choose to run.

Stained with the fallen, the once barren Iunctus began to change, drenched in the many essences of our Domains. The ground rose and fell, creating towering mountains and sweeping valleys. Unknown energies arced in every direction to carve winding rivers and cavernous tunnels. Colours swirled together and solidified, spouting plumes of matter both familiar and long forgotten. The few of us fortunate enough to survive the carnage looked on in wonder, oblivious to the magnitude of what we’d unwittingly conceived. We witnessed the creation of the land, sea and sky … Iunctus as we know it.

Today, eons later, we exist as aspects of this mottled world, feuding neighbors facing a common plight; the Domains from whence we emerged are dying, their holy essence seeping from the ancient ruptures that cast us out so long ago. In order to slow their decline, we've taken to stoking them with Caelus crystals, mysterious stones brimming with power that occasionally fall from the sky. To that end, faithful Clans aim to collect as many crystals as possible for their patron Domain, each Clan composed of Hybrids, mortals born of Iunctus who use the crystals for trade, Elementals who reside within the untainted essence of the Domains, and Antediluvians, such as myself, immortal survivors of the First War. Together we scour the land, barter and pillage, competing for space and buying precious time until someone can find a way to mend our broken homes… and perhaps one day, return to them."

- Chol, Ignan historian

[metamelonisle]

What if Kirby had a villian like Goku Black?

oh i'd love that i'd KILL for a ditto-type boss fight (one where the boss fights the same way you do) like in kirby fighters but even better

i can see it as someone wishing to the remains of NOVA to become like kirby (which turns them into an identical clone) and they use their new form to frame kirby for various mischievous happenings like being vaguely mean to his friends or stealing food and the like.

kirby's only ally ends up being. oddly enough, shadow kirby, who's just like. hey i only vaguely know you but when you were here you helped me save the entirety of my world so i'll help ya! and kirby has to use a spraypaint to avoid being mistaken for this pink menace, and find out just why he's doing this!

eventually it turns out the impostor stole kirby's face because they wanted the immense, infinite power kirby's body holds, and the ruining kirby's life was just an added plus. then it turns into a long fight where both kirbies use their powers to their fullest extent against each other, and our kirby comes out victorious, and the impostor either returns to normal, or permanently changes a different color and stops being evil. or doesn't. i dunno

the only snags i can find is that kirby's friends realistically would not shut him out like this, and would probably be more concerned for his well-being than anything else. they have too healthy of a relationship for me to be able to actually rift it this fast

also just gonna put it out there. i don't think the kirby series could ever get dark like the zamasu arc would. when you adapt things, you gotta consider not just the source material, but the material you're adapting it to. so yeah no infinite zamasu or timeline shit or kirby black killing all of kirby's friends. it just isn't in the spirit of the series for that stuff to happen.

(ok well actually i COULD see infinite zamasu happening, but being dealt with in a way that purifies the entirety of the villain's essence, causing them to reform into their original body and mind)

[anistarrose]

Chapter Summary: Why has Kravitz gone unresponsive on all channels? What have Barry and Noelle been planning? Who, if anyone, is left on Taako’s list of people to be trusted? Find out the answers to all these questions and more, right now on Fear The Reaper A Lot, Actually!

Characters: Kravitz, Taako, Barry Bluejeans, Angus McDonald, Magnus Burnsides, Merle Highchurch, Noelle | No-3113, The Raven Queen, The Director | Lucretia, misc. BoB cameos, Julia Burnsides, Garyl

Relationships: Taakitz, Angus McDonald & Taako, Barry Bluejeans & Kravitz, Kravitz & Angus McDonald

(chanting) ghost fight ghost fight ghost fight

***

Kravitz landed ankle-deep in an underground lake, scarcely twenty feet away from the red-robed figure on the shore. Barry’s head was turned, and he gave no sign of noticing Kravitz’s arrival, but it was clear where his focus was directed — a small mob of six freshly animated undead, occupying the full spectrum between zombie and skeleton.

Wasting no time, Kravitz threw himself at the lich, scythe blazing to life with a silent radiance.

Barry had really snapped, if he was out here raising the dead without any wards to hide himself. Even without the summons, this stunt could’ve appeared as a beacon on Kravitz’s radar at any moment, and that wasn’t at all like the Barry he’d known —

Heeding to his nagging suspicions, Kravitz slowed his pace — but Barry still didn’t move, and Kravitz felt his reluctant scythe slice through illusory red cloth, then tangible rotting flesh and brittle bone.

Fuck.

Leaping back from the disguised zombie, he decorporealized as fast as he could — just in time to withstand a light that felt blinding even to his undead senses, burning even to his formless soul. When the sunbursts faded and he returned to his reaper form, dazed, he barely glimpsed a robotic silhouette duck behind a rock formation on the other side of the lake, revealed only by her still-glowing cannon arm.

“Noelle, you backstabber!” Waves of magical force whipped off Kravitz’s scythe, hurtling across the cave and towards her hiding place. “I was rooting for you —”

Jagged spires of ice burst out from the lake, intact for less than a second before intercepting the force wave, and the two spells neutralized each other with an explosion of roaring wind and frozen shrapnel. Before Kravitz could attack again, a skeleton’s clawlike fingers dug deep into his right shoulder, and he launched himself into the air with a flick of his cloak to shake the attacker loose.

But before he could reach his intended altitude, a few yards short of the stalactite-dotted ceiling, something pulled him to a stop — not a bony hand at his shoulder this time, but a fuzzy constricting sensation around his scythe-bearing arm. When he looked down, he saw a web of tangled red threads, impossibly thin yet ensnaring him from wrist to mid-biceps — and every single one of them led back to Barry Bluejeans.

When Kravitz saw the real Barry, floating a few feet above the undead horde on the lake’s near shore, he couldn’t believe he’d fallen for the disguised zombie. This Barry was glowing with power, with desperation, with determination — but his form remained as composed and his expression as unreadable as ever. The only exception was his own right arm, around which his robe had unravelled up to the elbow — not just exposing smoke-black bones, but freeing the threads of that sleeve to go on the offensive, humming with an intensity that made Kravitz’s own bones shake as he tried, unsuccessfully, to decorporealize and escape.

He’d never seen anything like it before — but then again, he’d also never seen Barry come after him, instead of the inverse, and wasn’t that an equally urgent and terrifying mystery to unravel?

“Why, Barry?!” Kravitz shouted. “Why now?!”

Barry narrowed his eyes, and with a flick of a spectral hand, hurtled Kravitz down towards the rocky shore. Channeling another force blast through his free limbs, Kravitz flung himself to the right, but his downward momentum stayed with him, and he plunged into the lake with enough momentum that he hit the bottom with a sickening crunch.

You can give up any time. Barry’s voice echoed inside his head as electricity coursed through the threads, sending both Kravitz’s mind and body reeling. But I never will.

I’m sure you’re right that you won’t give up, Kravitz thought back with all the determination he could muster, still submerged in the lake, but like it or not, that’s one thing we’ve got in common.

Fighting through what must’ve been a potent paralysis spell, he summoned his scythe into his unrestricted hand and swung it at the threads, expecting to slice cleanly through most of them — but his blade was met with a fierce resistance, and though sparks of red and blue magic exploded from the point of contact, he didn’t feel a single thread snap.

He did feel Barry recoil, letting out a psychic scream that would’ve haunted a mortal for months, and drawing the threads back into his robe to let Kravitz free — which would be cause for celebration, if only it wasn’t supposed to be impossible. No part of a lich’s essence should withstand a reaper’s most sacred weapon — it was simply the way the world worked, the way the world was supposed to work.

Barry was stunned and convulsing, true — but the undead that Kravitz knew didn’t go through death throes, either, and Kravitz could only assume that the being he once would’ve called a lich was on the verge of recollecting himself.

What is Barry made of? What is he, and what happens if I try to reap a whole robe’s worth of those threads? Can I even reap him? Do I have any chance of winning this fight?

“Mister Bluejeans!” Noelle shouted from behind some stalagmite, but she was rapidly descending on the list of Kravitz’s top concerns.

As he burst to the surface, seeing Barry regain his composure, Kravitz began to chant as quickly as he could, offering a prayer to the Raven Queen and infusing the water of the lake with her power. When Barry’s eyes — gleaming white within a faint halo of blue — fixated on him again, Kravitz was ready, and he tore open a rift from the bottom of the lake to a point just above Barry’s head.

The ensuing deluge passed straight through Barry’s lich form with the telltale hiss of celestial magic burning away at an undead soul, and Kravitz allowed himself a relieved grin as Barry vanished into the waterfall. No matter how resistant Barry was to his scythe, there were always at least a few tricks that could hurt any lich under Faerun’s sun —

Then the crimson silhouette within the waterfall raised a hand, and the sapphire-blue edges of Kravitz’s portal turned an ashen gray as the rift shriveled and closed with a pop. Barry emerged from the water with hardly a shudder, wisps of magical steam rising off a red robe that was otherwise no worse for wear.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” said Barry, sounding genuinely apologetic, “but I spent the last few cycles building up an immunity to holy water.”

He extended his hands, firing a bolt of necrotic energy from each of his ten fingertips, but Kravitz twirled his scythe with a flick of his hand, reforming it as a shield emblazoned with swooping raven wings. Each bolt ricocheted off it in a different direction, and Barry clenched his hands into fists, channeling the spell’s residual energy into two spheres of consolidated dark magic. He hurled them in mirror-image arcs, both circling back towards Kravitz from behind —

With another flick of Kravitz’s wrist, his shield became two identical lightweight scythes, each intercepting a different sphere before the whirlwind of blades propelled Kravitz towards the ceiling, equal with Barry’s altitude. Expecting Barry to flee, but not about to risk an opening going to waste, Kravitz charged — but Barry snapped his fingers, and two discarded femurs from the bottom of the lake flew to his side, transforming into a pair of crimson scimitars and crossing to catch the blade of Kravitz’s first scythe.

The blow from the second scythe was more precise, and sent the scimitars hurtling across the cave, but Barry clapped his hands together, and they flew back to his defense, exchanging a flurry of increasingly rapid blows with Kravitz. One of them grazed the cuff of his jacket, and as he dove out of the way, he deliberately bashed his sapphire blades together, releasing a sunburst of blue light — and more importantly, a wave of thunderous force to fracture the scimitars, which Kravitz shattered with one final swing of his scythe.

He returned his focus to Barry himself, and realized — too late — that a single red thread of his sleeve had once again unraveled. Kravitz preemptively turned skeletal, surrounding himself with ghostly flames he hoped would make Barry think twice about trying to restrain him — but instead, Barry swung the stray thread towards the ceiling, where it cleaved through stalactites like a red-hot wire through butter, and a barrage of newly-freed spears rained down on Kravitz.

Only one struck him — barely bruising his shoulder in the fraction of a second before he decorporealized, and his soul-light possessed the stalactite itself. Barry summoned two more elongated bones to his side, but before he could transform them into scimitars, Kravitz hurtled his new form at them with such force that they crashed into the damp cave wall, shattering both the bones and stalactite while releasing Kravitz’s soul.

“It’s time to explain yourself!” Kravitz shouted, rematerializing and conjuring a dual-bladed scythe. Explain your lichdom, the Grand Relics, Taako’s unexplained deaths and missing memories —

With both hands, he spun the scythe like a baton, generating a vortex of blue lightning drawn from the essence of the Astral Plane itself. “This ends NOW!”

Undaunted, Barry shrugged. “Y’know, I did try to warn you the apocalypse was imminent,” he said nonchalantly, and melted into the shadows cast upon the wall.

The lightning pulverized stalactites across the cave, rendering even its darkest corners in brilliant blue light, but Barry had retreated too far into the earth for the magic to touch him — and in a way, it was almost reassuring, if only because the rest of this encounter had felt so alien.

This was the Barry that Kravitz knew, the Barry that would casually say something ominous before disengaging and vanishing off the map for the next three to eight months — but the moment of reassurance didn’t last long, because Barry reappeared on the lakeshore with his undead minions a moment later, and no, Kravitz was not falling for that again.

His scythe transformed into a longbow, a sapphire arrow already nocked. When he let it fly, it pierced the illusory red robe without a sound, and Barry’s deception vanished with a puff of smoke.

Where did you really go, Bluejeans?

He glimpsed some kind of shadow at the bottom of the lake, but before he could identify it, the surface froze over — and then, with a mighty creak, it rose, first as rapid-fire spears that Kravitz dodged with ease, but then as staggered subsections that formed a staircase — or as the terrestrial skeletons and zombies saw it, a perfect opportunity to charge at Kravitz.

The three who lead the assault fell in a volley of just as many arrows, but before the rest could arrive, Kravitz swung his bow around himself in an arc, transforming it back into a scythe just in time to strike the staircase with maximum force and shatter the ice. The remaining undead plummeted into the lake of still-blessed water, dissolving in a flash of light and a plume of steam.

“Not as resilient as your creator, eh?” Kravitz quipped, but not quite loud enough to miss the crackle of electricity behind him, and he somersaulted in midair to evade a crimson lightning bolt. Undeterred, Barry fired again, then a third time with two bolts at once, but Kravitz had no trouble dodging — though he realized, not a moment too soon, that Barry’s otherwise ineffective spells were driving him backwards and down, towards the rocky shore where Barry had raised the dead.

Not so fast, Kravitz thought, and plunged his scythe into the wall. Halfway across the cave, a massive blue crystal burst out from among the stalactites, missing Barry by a hair — but as he absconded, more sapphires tore through the cave ceiling, cutting him off at every angle until he was trapped in a cage of jagged crystalline fangs. Kravitz trembled from the exertion, bones rattling beneath his skin, but he didn’t have to maintain the spell for long — because through the translucent sapphires, he saw Barry’s silhouette clap two lightning-wreathed hands together, and an explosion of thunder pulverized every crystal in the cave. Kravitz morphed his scythe into a shield just in time to deflect the brunt of it, but the sheer force sent him flying backwards, and he landed on his feet on the lakeshore, exhausted but alert.

“I really am sorry, Kravitz. You seem like a decent guy.” Barry’s words echoed across the cave, making it impossible to tell if the slight distortion was coming from his own voice or simply the acoustics. “I’d always hoped that — that somehow, it wouldn’t turn out like this —”

“Oh, that’s real rich coming from you, Barry J. ‘created the Animus Bell and picked a fight with the Grim Reaper’ Bluejeans,” Kravitz retorted, switching his shield back into a scythe with none of the usual dramatic flourish. “You’re talking like my fate is sealed, but you haven’t won yet —”

Kravitz paused — because for the first time in twelve years of hunting Barry Bluejeans and ten years of knowing him, he could perfectly read the expression on Barry’s cowled semblance of a face. It was triumph, clear as day, and colored mainly by relief…

But not without an edge to it, a telltale hint of smugness.

“No, I think I have won,” Barry said. “Remember — you’re still outnumbered.”

A bolt of scorching light lanced down from above, rupturing the ground before Kravitz’s feet with all the red-hot fury of a meteor impact. He flung himself backwards, trying to escape the brunt of the attack — but the explosion hurtled him to the very back of the cave, where his spine met the cold limestone wall at high velocity, and he toppled to the ground before he could get his bearings.

“No,” he whispered. “No, I’m not outnumbered.” His ears rang, and lights danced across all but the most peripheral corners of his vision, but he still pulled himself to his feet, bracing himself against the wall. “I am the Raven Queen’s champion, and she will not let you escape me again —”

He extended an arm, to summon back the scythe he’d lost his grip on…

But for the first ever time, after more than eight centuries in the Queen’s undead flock, his scythe didn’t heed his call.

He could see it on the ground, barely ten feet away and undamaged as far as he could tell. But it didn’t move an inch, much less spring back into his hand — and only then, for the first time since arriving in the cave, did Kravitz notice the dark gray runes carved all around him, separating him from his weapon.

A trap, which had been Barry’s endgame all along. A trap, which Kravitz had flung himself right into.

Noelle floated to ground-level, hovering next to Barry and exchanging a few words that Kravitz’s ears still rang too much to hear. Making the most of their distraction, Kravitz lunged for his scythe with nothing to lose — but a shimmering, opalescent barrier sprung up from the runes, and he bounced off of it, shoulder first.

Barry glanced at him, and just sighed — which manifested, for a breathless entity made up of pure magic, as something more like a low electric crackle. “This was how I didn’t want it turn out, Kravitz.”

Kravitz ignored him, closing his eyes and raising his fingers to his temples. My Queen, I’m outmatched. I beseech you —

He ceased his prayer, his eyes flying open. It was wrong, all wrong, the terrifying gut-churning kind of wrong — and worst of all, he knew exactly why.

No electric blue buzz had reached him when he’d prayed to his goddess. It would be one thing if the Raven Queen hadn’t replied, but Kravitz hadn’t even been able to open a channel of communication in the first place.

And his scythe, he now realized, was not damaged nor unresponsive. He simply no longer had the ability to summon it — because The Raven Queen, and all the powers she’d graced him with, were completely cut off by Barry’s spell.

For the first time in countless lifetimes, Kravitz was alone.

***

Taako jumped when he heard the second knock of the day, expecting a barrage of accusations from the Director to follow — but it was Angus’s voice, not Lucretia’s, that called out to him a moment later.

“Sir? Do you mind if I come in? There’s something I need to talk to you about!”

Taako pressed his ear to the door. He couldn’t hear anyone else in the hallway, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. “Talk about what, Agnes?”

“Oh, uh… I’d rather not say while I’m standing out here. It’s kinda personal…” Angus lowered his voice. “And you know the drill, prying eyes and ears.”

Taako’s heart skipped a beat — because Angus McDonald, light of his life and the closest thing to a son he could imagine ever having, knowing information too dangerous to speak out loud — was scarier than any apocalyptic nightmares or even malfunctioning arrows.

Pointing his Umbra Staff at the door and tapping his forehead, Taako extended his sense of sight outside, verifying that the hallway was deserted — aside, of course, from one innocent-looking boy detective. With that information confirmed, he cracked the door open and grabbed Angus by the vest, yanking him inside before Angus could even get a protest in edgewise.

“You bring your Stone of Farspeech?” Taako asked, fidgeting with locks both magical and arcane. “Power it down, right now.”

“But — but I’m waiting for a text back from —”

Taako snapped his fingers, silencing the Stone in Angus’s pocket. “Well, suck it up and wait a little longer, kid, because the Director’s listened in on me through those things before and I’m sure she’ll do it again — so how’s that for prying ears? I’m about to be in enough trouble as is, I can’t let you get implicated too —”

Angus glanced around the room, gaze lingering on the ruins of the coffee table and the ashen footprints tread across the rug. “Sir, are you… okay? You’re acting like Caleb Cleveland whenever a case-changing discovery sends him spiraling into paranoia —”

“I — okay, look. The day got off to a rough start, but — but you worry way too much about me, kid.” How had Taako already fucked up this badly, confirming there was a conspiracy afoot and getting the kid invested? He should’ve just begged Angus to stay quiet, to stay away from him.

“I — I just can’t tell you what’s happening, Angus, for your own good! I shouldn’t have even let you in here in the first place, when I don’t know what’s going on or how to protect —”

With a hug, Angus knocked the wind out of Taako’s lungs and the wizard hat off of his head. “Sir, I found something big too! I didn’t know how to face it alone, but I couldn’t find Noelle, and Kravitz hasn’t texted me back —”

He smiled. “And I came to you, because I’m sure we can figure this out together. You just have to trust —”

“I trust you implicitly, Ango. You know this,” Taako blurted out. “I trust you with my life.

“I suspected as much, though it’s nice to hear you say it.” Angus met his eyes. “But I meant that you have to trust yourself with mine.”

Taako closed his eyes, and saw Glamour Springs. Forty people, fatally poisoned.

“I need to know what you know, sir. It might put me in danger — but there’s no one else I’d rather have watching my back. I’ll be okay, I really will — I believe in us!”

Phandalin. Eight-hundred and fifty people, all incinerated.

“And if it helps, sir… I trust you. Both implicitly and rationally.”

The return to Wave Echo Cave in search of liches. Angus imperiled, but alive.

Taako wasn’t sure when he’d first started hugging Angus back, but he hugged a little tighter, just for good measure. “I just don’t want to put any more pressure on you than I already have, little guy. Your job’s hard work, and I keep making it harder —”

“I know my limits better now. Kravitz helped me with that,” Angus assured him. “I’ll tell you if it ever gets to be too much, I promise.”

“Yeah, you better.” Taako took a deep breath, then another, coming a little closer to spilling the truth with each inhale. “So, I guess… I’d better tell you about the second Voidfish.”

“I knew it!” Angus exclaimed, but lowered his voice as he went on, seeing Taako flinch. “I knew the Bureau wasn’t telling us everything! How did you figure it out?”

“Garyl helped — he’s immune, apparently,” Taako whispered. “He was making me paranoid, so I unsummoned him — but earlier today, he said I lost a bunch of my memories twelve years ago, and it might’ve all been Lucretia’s master plan —”

“Twelve years?” Angus echoed. “Kravitz said your bounties showed up twelve years ago, at the same time as Barry and Lup — and believe it or not, also the Director and Davenport, of all people!”

Taako collapsed onto the couch, for what felt like the tenth time that morning. “I don’t think my brain can physically unpack all of this, so I’m just gonna ask — when did Kravitz say this? Have you talked to him recently?”

“This was just earlier this morning! He was the person I was expecting to text me back, actually — but did something happen?”

Taako stomach dropped. “Did — did he tell you anything that showed up as static?”

“He did! Something about your bounties and the relics that I just couldn’t grasp! That was how I figured out there was another —”

“Shit,” Taako muttered. “I hate to break it to you, Angus, but our little rogue detective bureau’s first order of business might be figuring out what the hell happened to Kravitz.”

Angus gasped. “You think some necromancers captured him? Or — or the Director?”

“I don’t know! Maybe both — maybe Lucretia is the evil necromancer behind all of this! Or maybe it’s Davenport, or it’s Barry after all, or whoever the hell Lup is —”

His umbrella unfurled in his lap, its handle swinging up to hit him in the chin before it tumbled to the ground. “Hey, learn to read the room! You think I have time to deal with you causing problems on purpose right now?!”

Angus pursed his lips. “Where did you get that Umbra Staff anyway? Seems like it’s more trouble than it’s worth.”

“Oh, you don’t know the half of the trouble this thing has given me, Ango. I found it on the original Wave Echo Cave trip — kinda near the Relic, actually. Former owner was just a skeleton in a… oh shit, that’s right. A skeleton in a fucking red robe.”

Angus just stared at him, dumbfounded, for ten full seconds before he pulled out his notebook and jotted the information down. “You and the other Reclaimers are terrible at passing on relevant information, you know that?”

“In my defense, I have severe undiagnosed memory loss!” Taako shot back. “And it’s been, like, eight months? Ten? See, I can’t even remember how long it’s been!”

“Wait. Hang on.” Angus sat down his notepad and closed his eyes. “If the Red Robes made the Grand Relics… you told me that Barry has mentioned Lup by name, correct?”

Taako nodded, then upon realizing Angus’s eyes were still closed, he spoke up. “Yeah.”

“So we can reasonably assume Lup’s a Red Robe, too. She’s been missing for ten years, last seen in Wave Echo Cave — and I would hazard a guess, specifically in the part of the cave that housed the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet. The part of the cave where you found your Umbra Staff.”

“And the worst times the umbrella has ever malfunctioned,” Taako realized aloud, heart pounding, “were when either Kravitz or I was about to hurt Barry.”

“Your staff doesn’t just absorb arcane foci, does it?” Angus gasped. “It absorbed an entire lich. We thought we’d never find Lup — but she’s been under our noses all along.”

***

“Barry, how? How did you do this?”

Noelle was still looking at Kravitz, but Barry had turned away, seemingly with no purpose in mind besides cultivating a sullen appearance.

“Took some inspiration from an entity I already knew could cut off planes from each other, and gods from their emissaries,” he muttered after a few seconds. “Not too proud of it, but you forced my hand.”

There was the confirmation Kravitz had been looking for, yet dreading — because Kravitz needed a font of magic, needed the Raven Queen, not just to fight but to exist in any capacity. His soul would burn out, drained by the exertion of maintaining physical form, without a direct line to either her or her dominion of the Astral Plane — gods, his soul should’ve burnt out already, within seconds of being sealed in.

“No, I mean — how am I still here, Barry?” How am I still half-alive?

“Arcane core buried a few feet beneath you.” Barry’s voice was practically monotone, and the concerned frown on Noelle’s display didn’t escape Kravitz’s notice. “Should fuel your soul at least until the end of the world. Maybe longer.”

He shuddered, though he kept it together — and unlikely as he was to admit it, even Kravitz was starting to feel a little worried for the lich who’d just spared his not-quite-life.

“You could’ve killed me like this at any point,” he pointed out. “During any of those ten years. Why didn’t you, if I’ve been such an impediment to your master plan —”

Barry whirled around, teleporting to a spot right outside the barrier with a clap of thunder and a spray of sparks. “You think this was a type of magic I wanted to mess with? You think I did this for my own sake?! I only did this so you wouldn’t kill my family!”

He and Kravitz stood face to face-shaped void — and there was something unsteady about that void and the lights inside, something telling Kravitz that if Barry had a true face at the moment, his expression would’ve just crumpled.

“Your family,” Kravitz echoed. “The other Red Robes. Magnus, Merle, and… Taako.”

“I’d do this all again to protect them,” Barry rasped. “No matter how convinced you are that you’re in the right, I can’t let you reap them —”

“I’m not going to reap them!” Kravitz blurted out, and the threads of Barry’s robe froze in place.

“What?!”

Kravitz raised his hand. “I swear I won’t! On my oath to the Raven Queen!”

Barry went not just perfectly still, but utterly silent, until Noelle spoke up. “Why not?!”

“We worked out a deal! I assumed you heard —” Before Kravitz knew it, he was laughing, even well aware that it made the lich in the room look like the sane one by comparison. “Gods, Barry. I really thought you were some kind of omniscient memory-wiping mastermind, leading a massive conspiracy with informants everywhere — but you didn’t even know I was letting the Reclaimers go! You’re just a family man who happens to be undead and a colossal pain in my ass! I can’t believe this!”

“What — what do you know about the memory wiping?” Barry finally spoke up, softer than Kravitz had ever heard him. “About the Voidfish?”

“Apparently not enough,” Kravitz admitted, lowering himself onto the floor of the cave and crossing his legs. “But… do you think could you tell me about it?”

Barry just stared at him for a few seconds, eventually glancing at Noelle, as if to check that she was just as dumfounded as he was. Then he turned back to Kravitz, and with a shrug, replied: “…I guess?”

Kravitz drummed his fingers on the ground — absorbing and channeling a trace of the arcane core’s aura, all while hoping Barry interpreted it as an absentminded tic, not one of deep and deliberate concentration. “If it’s not too much of a tangent, then literally any information on the apocalypse besides ‘it’s imminent’ would be nice.”

“Well, then,” Barry said slowly, “I guess I should start at the beginning. I wasn’t always a lich — I guess that was obvious, ‘cause that’s just how liches work — but I also wasn’t always a necromancer. I was totally fascinated with death, don’t get me wrong, and sometimes I dabbled in true necromancy against my better judgement, but it was… about as discouraged in my homeworld as it was here. So instead, I dedicated my life to studying interplanar travel.”

“Your homeworld,” Kravitz repeated, “which is… different from the Raven Queen’s domain? Different from this planar system?!”

“Probably shoulda led with that, huh?” Barry muttered. “Yeah, I’m technically an alien, and for a long time, I worked for an alien space agency. We searched for signs of life, or even mere existence, outside our own planar system, but we kept hitting dead ends — until a light we almost mistook for a meteor fell from the sky, and changed everything. We called it the Light of Creation, and it…”

He sighed. “You could say it enthralled us. It illuminated these underlying mechanisms of not just magic, but broadly speaking, interactions — between things, between worlds, between people. We called them bonds, and with the way we were studying them so single-mindedly, it didn’t even take us a year to build a spaceship that could run on the things. Seven of us flew that ship off the material plane on her maiden voyage, and — well, you can read all our names straight from your book of bounties. Our captain was Davenport, and Lucretia was our chronicler, while Merle was the biologist, and Magnus — oh, Magnus was the best security system that a team of five wizards and a cleric could wish for. I was chief science officer, of course, and… Taako and Lup, the twins, were the arcanists.”

“Oh my gods,” Kravitz whispered. “Taako — I had Taako hunting Lup. He thought his life depended on —”

“He didn’t know.” Barry shuddered, red smoke escaping from his mouth as he spoke. “Neither of you did.”

Faced with any other lich, Kravitz would’ve braced himself for a breakdown and ensuing fallout, but today, he stayed seated to watch as calmly as he could — and sure enough, the smoke faded to a few harmless wisps as Barry went on.

“Sorry, I — I’m getting ahead of myself. The mission, the Starblaster mission, it was only supposed to last two months. But in our obsession with the Light, with the spaceship it made possible, we missed… warning signs leading up to our departure. Storm clouds hanging overhead, colors losing their luster, hell, even eyes in the sky and in the Ethereal Plane. When the seven of us took flight, we thought we were explorers — but in the blink of an eye, we became refugees, because right after we took flight, the Hunger descended on our world and devoured it whole.”

He must’ve noticed a shell-shocked expression on Kravitz’s face, because he went on: “Yeah, it’s a lot, even when you’ve had decades to process it. We fled to another planar system, and the Light of Creation followed us there — but so did the Hunger, and a year after arriving, it consumed yet another world without mercy. Magnus died fighting it, but I’m sure you see where this is going — when we materialized in the next planar system, he was as good as new, and the cycle repeated. We figured out that as long as one of us escaped the Hunger on the ship, anyone who died that year would return to life, and that if we could escape with the Light, the Hunger would only damage the plane instead of consuming it — but recovering the Light was about as consistent as rolling a pair of dice you hadn’t rigged, and the Hunger kept gaining on us.”

“And this,” Kravitz assumed, “was when you started practicing necromancy?”

“Yeah. I guess I could play it off as, I dunno, something I studied to understand how we kept getting revived every year, but… I’m not gonna lie to you. I was calling myself a necromancer by the third cycle because it was dangerous, and we needed dangerous magic to stand a chance against the Hunger.” A fondness crept into Barry’s voice, and Kravitz watched a small tear in his robe sew itself back together. “Lup and I didn’t become liches until decades later — just like we took our time with most things, I guess — and that was for power, too. But there weren’t any blood sacrifices, or any of that traditional ‘store your soul in an artifact of dark magic’ stuff — we powered our lich forms with bonds, the same things that powered our spaceship. We did it with the help of our family, to protect our family, and I’d do it all again. And Lup… I know she’d feel the same, if she were here.”

“Were you close? You and Lup, I mean?”

The lights of Barry’s not-quite-face blinked. “Gotta say, bud, after everything I just told you, that is not the question I thought you’d have for me. But… yeah, you could say that. We were in love for the better part of a century, and if you’ve ever seen me… not fall apart when I should have, it was because I was thinking of her. Reminding myself that if I gave up, then everything we’d worked for would be the next to come undone, and even worse, I’d — I’d never have a chance to see her again.”

“You don’t know where she is either,” Kravitz realized, and only noticed he’d spoken out loud when he saw Barry shrink backwards and wrap his arms around his chest, his robe folding in on itself like red light drawn towards a spluttering black hole.

“Wow, Kravitz,” Noelle spoke up, digitized voice dripping with sarcasm as she glared at him. “Way to not ask sensitive questions to the guy you just learned was powered by emotions —”

“I’m sorry!” Kravitz exclaimed, and he honestly meant it. “I wasn’t thinking —”

“No, I’ll be alright,” Barry insisted, with a confidence that suggested he’d survived worse breakdowns. No longer radiating lightning nor anguish, he floated right up to the opalescent barrier, even resting a hand on it. “You know, the Hunger’s kinda like this spell I used to trap you, ‘cept on steroids. It cuts off all the planes in a system before devouring them, but always goes for the Celestial Plane first, rendering the bonds between god and emissary unusable — and it’s done that so many times, Kravitz, it’s consumed so many deities and added them to its number. It’s impossible to defeat that kind of army, that never-ending march of fallen gods from fallen worlds older than memory — but Lup and I, we came up with a new plan. We knew the Hunger needed the Light to persist — so we hid that Light, splitting it in seven, to try and starve the Hunger out.”

He sighed. “And that’s how the refugees of my homeworld nearly destroyed yours with the Grand Relics.”

Though Barry had only confirmed his suspicions, Kravitz’s jaw still dropped. I was right. And Taako still has no idea. I need to tell him —

“We were enthralled, all of us, with the idea of finally stopping the Hunger,” Barry continued, drifting back from the barrier. “Not all of us in the same way — Lucretia had an idea that was different altogether, equally bad as it was — and when we descended from the sky to introduce the Relics, like demigods about to be undone by our hubris, we enthralled your world with conflict and bloodshed. Because the Light of Creation, at least in the form of the Relics we made from it, is a poison disguised as an antidote. It will always be… hungered for.”

He chuckled bitterly. “And here I am, confessing my family’s crimes to the one person in this universe who knows the cost of our actions better than anyone. Kravitz, on behalf of all of us — I’m so sorry that you and your world bore the consequences of our mess. I’m sure your job was an awful lot simpler before we showed up —”

“It was,” Kravitz agreed, “but maybe not for the reason you think. You know, before the Relic Wars, souls almost always retired to the Astral Plane without resistance… but victims of the Relics never rested quietly. I’m no stranger to ghosts with unfinished business, of course, but so many of them were still enthralled, as you put it — and before the wars dwindled out, there were constant rebellions and escape attempts that plunged the Astral Plane into chaos.” He paused. “Speaking of which. I always wondered why the Relic Wars ended when they did.”

“Good question.” Barry sighed. “Out of seven explorers, you know how many had the foresight to realize how dangerous the Grand Relics were? It was just one — Lucretia, the youngest, who knew before anyone else that we were about to poison this world. She had an alternate plan to defeat the Hunger, and though its side effects were just as unacceptable, she was in denial of those effects just like I was in denial about the Relics’ consequences. I — I hate talking about her like this, she’s family to me just like the rest of them, but — she needed the Light in one piece for her plan, so not long after Lup went missing trying to bring an end to the Relic Wars, Lucretia went and — she fed our mission archives to the Voidfish. A being that consumes information, and makes it incomprehensible unless you’ve been specifically inoculated… or, unless you’re undead.”

“So your family, and the world, both forgot the Grand Relics,” Kravitz finished. “Except you and me.”

“Exactly. But Lucretia still needed to collect all seven, and… well, there were only seven people in the world who could resist their thrall, and that was because they’d spent a century building up an immunity. And Fischer, that’s what Magnus named the Voidfish, eventually had a kid — or so I assume, because I don’t know where else Lucretia would get a baby alien jellyfish whose home plane was destroyed. Point is, Luce fed the baby certain things she needed kept secret, then inoculated Magnus, Merle, and Taako from the parent, so she could set them up as Reclaimers in her Bureau of Balance —”

“Wait, you mean that — that Lucretia from my list of bounties, and the Director I keep hearing about from Taako, are the same person?!”

“Yeah.” Barry nodded. “Do you know if Davenport’s also with the Bureau, by any chance? I haven’t seen him in — in a really long time.”

“If I’d known where he was, I would’ve arrested him for dying eleven times,” Kravitz replied without thinking, regretting it instantly when Barry glowered at him. “I mean, I would have before having this conversation, but not now! I swear!”

“You’re not bound to your oath while you’re cut off from your goddess,” Barry pointed out. “And I dunno why I just told you that, though I guess you seem like the kinda guy who’d stick to your word anyway —”

“Let’s backtrack to Lucretia,” Kravitz cut in. “What was her plan to stop the Hunger? Why was it so unacceptable, and… and why does she need the Light?”

Barry looked away, answering in a slowly fading voice.“She wanted to starve the Hunger out too, just like Lup and I were thinking. But she wanted to use the Light to create a shield around this planar system — and I know that sounds great in practice, but any barrier strong enough to keep out the Hunger would sever all this world’s extraplanar bonds. It would keep the Hunger out, but everything inside would be reduced to ash, and Lucretia… never wanted to believe that. I have to assume she still doesn’t believe it, and will go ahead with her shield as soon as she reclaims the last two Relics. The Temporal Chalice, and the Animus Bell.”

“Well, shit,” Kravitz muttered, earning a grunt of agreement from Barry. “So our options — our only three options are being turned to ash, fighting a losing battle with an eldritch abomination, and continuing to let the Relics tear this world apart?”

“It’s… a little too late for that last one, actually.” Barry shook his head. “The Hunger’s got a lock on our planar system now — Noelle told me she saw stars disappearing, and that means we’re down to a matter of months.”

“Oh gods, that’s why there’s fewer stars? I thought I was going crazy!” Kravitz gasped, turning to Noelle. “Barry told you all this as well?”

Noelle bobbed up and down slightly, presumably to indicate a nod. “He filled me in on the highlights. Then a bit more detail ‘bout the Hunger, when I asked him just a couple hours ago if he knew why the constellations looked off.”

“I can’t believe this,” Kravitz sighed. “I should’ve just asked you to explain yourself years ago! You could’ve cleared up so much —”

“I should’ve tried to tell you more,” Barry admitted, “but the truth sounds so insane that I didn’t think you’d believe the whole unfiltered thing. Hell, I’m amazed you believe me right now —”

“Uh, actually, about that…” Kravitz smiled sheepishly, instinctively crossing his arms behind his back to hide his soon-to-be-implicated spellcasting hands. “I appreciate you leaving me some magic when you cut me off from the Raven Queen, but in the interest of… honesty, you should know that before I joined the Queen’s retinue, I was a bard. My powers are limited right now, since I don’t have an instrument on me, and even with one I wouldn’t have expected this to work — but a couple minutes ago, I cast Zone of Truth on you.” He shrugged. “Being a last-ditch effort as it was, I kind of assumed you’d notice it —”

Barry threw his head back with a guffaw of laughter, and his hood fell to his shoulders, unveiling a mass of dark smoke that resembled a mullet. “Oh, Merle would be so proud!”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?” Noelle wisecracked, and then all of them were laughing at poor Merle’s expense, just like three old friends who’d never, ever tried to kill or imprison or backstab each other.

“Yes, it is a compliment,” Barry chuckled, “but don’t you dare tell him I got got by a Zone of Truth, or I’ll never hear the end of it!”

“I, uh, I’ve got one more backstory question, if you don’t mind,” Kravitz began as his laughter died down, and Barry’s attention immediately returned to him. The lich was easier to read with his cowl down, revealing cues like the quizzical, attentive tilt of his head.

“Yeah? Shoot.”

“I saved this one for last because I’m asking in… well, mostly my own self-interest…” Kravitz took a breath. “But does Taako have any, um, still-relevant love interests he lost his memories of?”

“Oh my gods, Kravitz…”

“I like him a lot, even though it’s still early — but I’d feel awful replacing a partner he was ripped away from, especially under these circumstances —”

“A truce with the Grim Reaper is one thing!” Barry shouted to no one in particular. “But being the Grim Reaper’s brother-in-law? Being Taako’s best man when he and the Grim Reaper get married?!”

Kravitz beamed. “Okay, I’ll take that as a no!”

Still chuckling, Barry silently snapped his fingers. A dozen runes flashed before going dark forever, and a moment later, the opalescent barrier faded away.

“I tell you what, bud,” he said. “You help me save all of reality, and I won’t even give you the shovel talk.”

[pvremichigan]

To Fix My Mistakes. [Arc Drabble 3]

“I got all of them. I hope this is enough.”

“It should suffice. Have you met the preparation requirements?”

“I think so. I’m pretty sure I did everything I need. The souls are well preserved too.”

As much as she wanted to waste time... She also knows that she couldn’t. This was it. This was the final stop.

Stepping into Carter’s library in the basement, she looked around to distract herself. Sure she’s seen all of this before dozens of times, she just didn’t want to have to think about the fate before her. Looking to the right against the wall, she closely paid attention to the large hydrochamber her body was kept in the first time she went to hell. Knowing the consequences last time, they can’t do it again this time. She let her long standing friend set up everything he needed, including the books, the sigils, and the technology to prolong the opening of the portal once he’s able to get it started. The man was fairly taller than her, his slicked back dark hair never once deterring from it’s usual style. He always wore a suit... It was practically a trait of his now. They had been friends for a long time, around the early 1900′s. Even after everything, Carter still helps Mich out. He’s a good friend... She’s truly honored to have met and helped him.

The woman placed the jars of souls on the table along with the blade which held the final soul. It didn’t take long for everything to be set up, yet the more progress they made, the more Mich seemed to choke on her own beating heart at the knowledge of what she knows she’s going to go through.

“Should I call him forth?”

“... Just... Give me a minute. I wanna do one last thing.”

“Surely.”

Mich gave a hesitant nod in appreciation, making her way up the stairs and out on the porch. There, she took in the sights of the dark. Midnight... Past midnight, she believed. The moon shined blindingly on the land around her, illuminating the area in a melancholic blue. With a shaky sigh, she took out a pack of cigarettes to smoke her last one. For a while. As she lit the stick, memories flashed in and out of her head, almost fading out like a dying battery until they were truly gone from her mind. All in those moments. The woman sat down, slouching forward as she took her time to ‘enjoy’ (the best she could) her last cigarette for a long time. Seconds passed, the stars above twinkled far more pleasingly than the lit end of her cigarette. Though the tones of red and orange within the heap of gray ash did give Mich a rush of nostalgia. It was nice... Relaxing. Sitting out on a night like this, keeping calm as the dark clouds above still manage to sweep by faster than the morning clouds. The little things in life... She can recall enjoying. Things like that, so barely noticeable but yet they seem to catch your eye. Your brain stores that meaningless little memory for the rest of your life. Hopefully... She can remember this night. The last night on earth she remains soulless.

She’s ready to restart.

After about 30 minutes, the woman made her way back down the stairs, seeming a bit more... Composed than before.

“Let’s start quickly. I wanna get this over and done with.”

With a nod, Carter keeps the target in mind as he requests a visitation from him. Within moments, a very loud gust from the sound of a wing flap fills their ears before a man stood before them. He’s dressed in more of a tan suit, gold accents here and there. Gold was his eyes and even his hair. The thing that truly stood out was his black top hat. Seems like he never changed that feature about himself. Mich couldn’t recall if he’s always had a cane... But it was a fitting addition.

“Someone call?”

The golden man glanced to Mich, giving a grin of familiarity.

“So you’re ready for this?”

“Long time no see...”

“How are ya, Mich?”

“I’ve been better.”

“I recall.”

“You’ve changed a bit. Snap, was it?”

“It was. But I go by something else. Heaven gave me a new name. You can call me whatever you want.”

“What is it?”

“Xephrel.”

The woman gave a nod. If she had changed... Then he deserves to be treated with the same recognition.

“Xephrel it is.”

“I hate to intrude, but we should truly get a move on.”

Mich glances over at Carter with a nod, glancing up at Xephrel once more before going over to stand by Carter. Xephrel just gives a neutral grin, leaning against his cane as the other two did what they needed to.

“Hey, you think this bunch will last you?”

“If I don’t need to use a lot of energy, it should be fine. I can use them sparsely. Don’t worry about me, worry about your own safety. I’ll be here to back you up the best I can.”

She gave a firm nod before looking to Carter and speaking between her and him.

“Hey... What did you have to give to have him help us like this?”

“Consider this me returning the favor for him helping me come to existence and you guys not trying to kill me.”

She had... Asked Carter but she supposed she got her answer. Was she skeptical? Yes... But there was no room for that right now. No reason to be either. He was helping, that’s all she needed to worry about.

Hours passed until Carter had finally gotten a tear in the realm that he needed. Keeping the portal’s focus on that tear, he began to have the machine connected to the portal slowly pry it open. The dark swirling matter of the portal grew inch by inch... Mich watched, skin growing more cold. No backing out. It’s literally impossible to back out now. Xephrel looked down to her, tapping his cane on the ground and shattering the black casing to reveal the angel blade inside. In one motion, he had swiped at himself and Mich, causing a gash in both of them. Mich yelped out, beginning to panic. Xephrel put a hand on her shoulder to reassure her.

“Relax doll, this is just to swap souls for now.”

The blade seemed to draw out Xephrel’s soul, the aura around it glowing a golden hue. It’s as if the sword was guiding the essence towards Mich. She watched nervously as the golden hue seeped into her body. The amount of power and chaos it began to create was agonizing. The woman tensed up, unable to even shout out in pain.

“Give it a moment, just breathe. It’ll stop hurting once it conforms to your being. You need to keep it until you find and get your soul. Be qui-”

The portal was opening further and further, the loud whirring and rushing of the dimensional pull was drowning his words out, causing him to need to speak louder.

“Be quick about this, you need to find your soul as soon as you can. Take too long and my soul will begin to destroy you from the inside out. You need to extract my soul QUICKLY before you touch yours, otherwise your soul will be destroyed and possibly consumed. Just toss mine to the side, I’ll pick it up later.”

He gave a wink to try to lighten the mood. The wind and the pull of the portal was beginning to suck things in. She looked back in a panic, not wanting to go through this again.

“THE HARDEST PART IS GOING TO BE LEAVING. DO YOUR BEST, DON’T GIVE UP. I’LL DO WHAT I CAN TO HELP OUT IF I’M ABLE TO. HEY.”

The hybrid man turned Mich’s head towards him, giving her a confident grin.

“YOU GOT THIS. NOW GET IN THERE.”

His words reached her, but Mich was still unsure about all of this. Her expression of doubt and fear said it all, but there was no more waiting. There was absolutely no way of assuring she’d even be successful in her endeavors or even get out in the end. All these worries and thoughts swarmed her head, but everything was interrupted as she felt a harsh but gentle shove, pushing her into the portal.

The whirring stopped. The loud winds stopped... Around her... It was gray. A town... Nearly a ghost town. Fog seemed to cover the streets. She knows this place... This is... This is Detroit, right..? Mich took some time adjusting, her vision going in and out due to the adjustment. She was scared. Mortified. Her breathing was heavy, it felt like eyes surrounded her, staring her down to stone. There was a hellish whirring in her ears and head now, far different from the whirs caused by the opening rift. The hums became so loud it began to hurt. Ringing, whirring, the sound of her lethally fast heartbeat. It was all too much, crashing down on her all at once. She painfully covered her ears and held her own held, agony setting in and only worsening by the second. She screamed out in pain, blood beginning to drip from her tongue and nose. Moments before she thought she was about to pass out, being overwhelmed by this unbearable pain, it all came to a sudden halt.

The woman waited a moment in confusion and disorientation before she did her best to gather herself the best she could and stood up, taking in her surroundings. Yeah... This was Detroit... But something about this was uncanny. In the very far distance, her suspicions were confirmed. Loud, wretched shrieking from something certainly inhuman echoed the streets and buildings. She recognized those sounds all too well. She recognized the silence all too well.

This... was Hell.

[the-lightning-strikes-again]

Okay so... yall talking about fix it fics and shit canon and all but if you have a few moments - what are your ideas about how the show couldve ended? Or go after s6?

Hi, anon! Thanks for the note! Oh wow, there’s so many answers to that, haha. I do think there are some real gems from s3 that would have made sense to work toward in s6-s8:

I think it would have made more sense to really expand on the rift creatures / dark entity as the final big bad. At the end of the day, VLD’s Zarkon and Honerva were victims of quintessence corruption that inhibited their self-control, but there were other forces pulling some strings that were never really fleshed out.

In the s3 flashback, pre-rift Honerva said the creature from the neighboring reality talked to her? Lotor in s5 noted that Honerva had grown fearful and paranoid, whereas before she was enraptured by the rift? I think there’s so much there around the quintessence field and its entities that would have made sense to carry through as the final big bad–and to round the VLD story back to the events that so originally disordered the universe.

And a part of this is my own desire for some clearer world-building too. VLD still can’t explain to me how quintessence works. Like, why exactly does the essence of life itself (quintessence) turn people into monsters, if they already have quintessence in them to simply be alive and are surrounded by the quintessence already in all things? Is it really the quintessence that corrupts people…or does it make sense that it’s something else in the mix?? Other things that would have made sense s6 and onward:

If I have to keep the colony plot, then Allura goes to the colony and actually uses the life-saving powers she learned via Lotor to restore them and possibly figure out any additional details about the situation itself. It’s wild that the second colony got jilted totally in s8, especially for being the core reason that s7-s8 plot even existed, lol. Bonus points if Allura discovers/realizes that Lotor was after life-saving alchemy for the sake of said colony. Also, it would be nice if the Alteans are thankful to Allura for restoring them, and they bond with her.

Honerva actually having maternal instincts to care about her son. She oddly showed MORE genuine emotion for him in s4 and s5, while appearing to wake up from her corrupted memory, than she did from after the point that Oriande supposedly restored her. Had Honerva managed to convince Lotor of her awakening soul and that she had passed the test at Oriande, Lotor might not have pursued returning to the paladins or otherwise jumpstarting a dumb Sincline vs Voltron battle.

Sendak not attacking Earth out of revenge because that’s generally pointless for his ultimate desire to be emperor of the Galra. It would have made more sense for him to strategically attack Lotor’s empire and make swooping gains of territory for the Fires of Purification.

An s7 arc aligning Honerva and Lotor back to team Voltron. They’re suspicious/cautious due to unresolved conflict about the colony but are also in need of stamping out the rise of Sendak (who has perhaps made some deal with the dark entities/rift creatures that approach him, promising to empower him as they had Zarkon?).

The Sincline ships transforming as an assist to Voltron–but also with maybe a few jabs to Voltron too (like, Hulk punching Thor in Avengers 2012) and some Lotor snarky snark about alliances.

Various fronts coming together to defeat Sendak and permanently drive away the rift creatures or dark entities from the universe.

The successful accomplishment of obtaining unlimited clean energy so that the Galra empire could replenish all it had stolen from the planets it had enslaved, and to also allow them to leave the empire without further war.

Earth getting access to quintessence and building its own defender (IGF-Atlas). Other planets following suit.

Voltron no longer being a single vigilante but being part of a united front for justice and peace-keeping/humanitarian efforts as everyone works together to heal the universe from 10,000 years of trauma.

And I guess this is just one way to “fix” VLD, haha. There’s so many possibilities!